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The sermon for Dec. 06, 2002 is: narcisse 3:05 p.m. My boy Matt emails me asking about our one-time acquaintance Narcisse Dille, who if you're not acquainted with there's utterly no way I can describe; and if you are acquainted with you can understand how there's utterly no way I can describe him. I reproduce our correspondence here as an aid to the doubtless countless cultural paleoarchaeologists who will peruse Diaryland's sad pages in the far future, in their inevitably futile attempt to make sense of you and me and our times.
--response-- hulla hola. Okay, your answers: 1. He named himself after Dill in "To Kill A Mockingbird." Only later, when his blancophagia wobbled uncertainly into Adam-Ant-qua-18th-century-highwayman-qua-"stand and deliver"-qua-"le roi soileil" territory did he affect the Franketic "-e" to his name. As you may recall, this evolved finally into "Narcisse Dille." 2. He was born in Marin County -- I could tell you the exact city if I remembered the names of any cities in Marin County. I drove him to his family pied-a-terre thereat; he refused to let me in, or even show me the exact location of his house. He was born John Walker Lemmes -- the fact that he was from Marin County and that his name was John-Walker-L-something made me think for a while he was the American Taliban (not withstanding that Mr Lindh affected similar French royalty ideas about personal hygeine during his Afghan tenure). 3. He was kicked out of Kresge College due to complaints tendered by his apartment-mates that he was stockpiling rotting and hazardous materi�l, to wit styrofoam, large sheets of plastic, pigeons, doves, and the occasional white Christian infant. I still remember when we were performing a ritual on one of his objets d'art and the bird actually took wing inside his little concrete room lit by a single flourescent, fluttering in a mad prelapsarian panic and rousing a mighty gale that made all the wee bits of styrofoam, blank paper, plastic wrap and tiny soap carvings stolen out of Elfland flurry madly about. We were listening to opera at the time. John/Dill/Narcisse lay his heavily powdered hands on his heavily powdered cheeks and wailed, "Coo! Coo! Coo!" the entire while. 3a. He then lived in my dorm room, using my ID card (since I was too lazy) to go fetch food from the cafeteria for us both. Since he only ate white food, natch, I subsisted along with him on a diet of rice, bean sprouts, corn kernels bleached with lime juice, jicama and white asparagus. I think he was officially still an enrolled student during this time; only his housing arrangements had been abrogated. I also think he let his enrollment lapse during this time, which brings us up to 4. France. Yes, Dill went to France and came back Narcisse Dille. He was there only for a week or two; he was mugged at a Parisian metro station on his first day there. He then told me that he spent the rest of his langour there waning in faux absinthe-withdrawal on the metro tracks; over the years since then, that story has become embellished (so that I imagine it's now that he was saved and succoured by the Liberation, and aided them in their fight against Petain -- kinda like "Top Secret!", now that I think about it). 5. He became a performance artist in Santa Cruz. I remember his first concert, all gaudily advertised with butterflies and invocations of "la Narcisse Dille." People actually paid to hear him sit at a piano and very softly play all white keys. To my mind now this reminds me of Morton Feldman and other vaguely contemplative irritating arpeggios that have become all the rage, but contemporary reception then was of puzzlement, befuddlement, inchoate outcry and demand for refunds. I think he refunded everyone gladly, since they had neglected to pay him in white currency. 5a. After that concert he became associated with some outfit in San Francisco called Theatre Rhinoceros. I don't recall whether or not this has anything to do with Ionesco, but I do think he would have made a beautiful bald soprano. 6. Narcisse Dille was obsessed with the colour white. Regardless of whatever aesthetic or political or artistic credo he may manifest as the rationale behind this, originally it was because John Lemmes was a dutiful goth and was in love with another dutiful goth girl. Dutifully they dressed in black. When she dutifully broke up with him, he changed his name and decided never to wear black again. Since he was such a dutiful goth, it was only logical that he thereupon dressed only in white lace finery forever on. He tried to dye his hair white too, to purge his black hair of its gothitude and all its associations of girl, but whatever he did transformed his hair the colour and consistency of exceptionally conductive copper wire. I liked writing this. I think I'm gonna post it on Diaryland.  
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